Theater to stage ‘Romeo and Juliet’ adaptation based on late rocker’s music

Two distinct stories of passion, yearning and young lives cut short will dovetail in rock-driven fashion at the Old Globe Theatre this fall, as the theater opens its season with the new musical “The Last Goodbye.”

The just-announced show is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet,” set to the songs of Jeff Buckley, the singer-songwriter who has become a major cult figure since his death at age 30 in 1997.

“The Last Goodbye,” conceived and adapted by Michael Kimmel, will be directed for the Globe by Alex Timbers, whose flair for the unpredictable and adventurous (in shows from “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” to the La Jolla Playhouse-bred “Peter and the Starcatcher”) has made him one of the most sought-after young directors in American theater.

The production will run at the Globe Sept. 20 to Nov. 3, with an official opening Oct. 6.

The Tony Award-nominated Timbers’ most recent project (the David Byrne-scored musical “Here Lies Love,” about Imelda Marcos) is now going up at New York’s Public Theater — where Globe artistic chief Barry Edelstein was until recently the chief of Shakespeare programming. That connection helps explain how “The Last Goodbye” landed at the Globe, as a replacement for the previously announced musical “The Honeymooners,” which has been shelved indefinitely.

Edelstein had seen the work’s 2010 world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, in a different version directed by Kimmel himself. When it became a candidate for the Globe after “The Honeymooners” dropped out, Edelstein began discussing the piece with Timbers, whom he calls “a once-in-a-generation talent.”

When Edelstein heard the director’s vision for the project, “My jaw dropped,” he recalls. “I said, omigod, this is great, you’ve really figured this all out.”

The piece, which keeps “Romeo and Juliet” in its original period, also stays with Shakespeare’s essential storyline, although in a heavily redacted form, with Buckley’s songs woven into the narrative.

“It’s really very much about youthful, fiery passions driving these young people toward this tragic end,” Edelstein says of the show’s emotional tone. And Buckley’s music “cries from the heart. It’s really a good match for the emotional tone of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’”

Buckley first gained notice in the early 1990s with his deeply emotional, sometimes haunting music. His 1994 album, “Grace,” landed on numerous “best of” lists, and his affecting, soulful cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallejulah” (which will be part of “The Last Goodbye”) has become a classic. The musical takes its name from another song on the album.

In 1997, after years of touring and performing, the singer-songwriter was working on material for his next album when he drowned during a late-night swim in a Mississippi River channel in Memphis. The death was ruled an accident.

Fascination for his life and music has grown immensely since then; a movie focused on Buckley will premiere at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival this month, and there’s also a new book out tracing the evolution of “Hallelujah.”